Cannot create desktop shortcut for profiles in Brave Settings

[stevenmchoi]

Description

I'm transitioning from Chrome to Brave, and I use multiple profiles from my desktop, opening them with desktop shortcuts. However, in my Brave profile settings, when I turn on "Show desktop shortcut", no shortcut is created. Refreshing the page will show it switched back off.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a Brave profile.
2. Go to: chrome://settings/manageProfile
3. Turn on "Show desktop shortcut".
4. Refresh.

Actual result:

1. No shortcut on desktop for profile.
2. "Show desktop shortcut" is off.
   

Expected result:

1. Brave shortcut on desktop
2. "Show desktop shortcut" remains on.

Reproduces how often:

Always

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave	0.61.52 Chromium: 73.0.3683.86 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	f9b0bec6063ea50ce2b71f5b9abbae7beee319a6-refs/branch-heads/3683@{#858}
OS	Windows 10 OS Build 17134.590

Reproducible on current release:

• Does it reproduce on brave-browser dev/beta builds?
  -- Doesn't work on dev: 0.63.20 Chromium: 73.0.3683.75 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)
  -- Worked at first on beta, but then it stopped working: 0.62.37 Chromium: 73.0.3683.86 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)

Website problems only:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields?
  -- N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome?
  -- Works on Chrome; not on Brave

Additional Information

I'm creating this issue so that it can be fix in the Brave Dev build and also in case others are looking for it. For now, I'll be using the beta version

[LaurenWags]

+1 from a couple users on https://community.brave.com/t/simple-request-desktop-shortcuts-for-individual-profiles/68772

Note - macOS doesn't have this functionality now, so when this gets fixed it would be great if it could be added to macOS.

[sougat818]

+1

[wwboynton]

For anyone spelunking: It seems like Brave auto-creates these shortcuts in AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\ImplicitAppShortcuts on Windows. I was able to dig up one of those and pin it to my taskbar. If you right click, you can see it's just a shortcut using the --profile-directory= flag, with Default, Profile1, etc. lining up with the folders where profile data is stored in AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data. I hope this is helpful to someone on Windows trying to get a new shortcut pinned for an existing profile, since it seems like Brave only creates these shortcuts at the time of creation of a new profile.

[JayBeavers]

+1, this is an issue for Manjaro / Gnome as well as OSX.

[LnxGnome]

+1 on macOS

[dswapnil104]

+1 on linux / Gnome

[jonathanstiansen]

Is this a big challenge? I assume all the parts exist, and it's just about integrating them? Maybe I'm wrong?

[nikolov9996]

Not working at the moment, the switch is missing :/

[MitchSchwartz]

+1 on mac, quite shocking this isn't available

[hedonnn]

+1 on Linux Mint. Come on.

[satheshshiva]

+1 mac os

[jonathanbodart]

+1 MacOS

[MrRTi]

• 1 MacOS

[OleksandrHo]

• 1 MacOS

[daviesgeek]

+1 for macOS

[himanshu634]

+1 for macOS

[Adamantt777]

For anyone spelunking: It seems like Brave auto-creates these shortcuts in AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\ImplicitAppShortcuts on Windows. I was able to dig up one of those and pin it to my taskbar. If you right click, you can see it's just a shortcut using the --profile-directory= flag, with Default, Profile1, etc. lining up with the folders where profile data is stored in AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data. I hope this is helpful to someone on Windows trying to get a new shortcut pinned for an existing profile, since it seems like Brave only creates these shortcuts at the time of creation of a new profile.

It would be very useful to have a button with the option to manually create shortcuts on windows desktop, for each profile and their color circle set, if we decide to change the color, how can we re create a new shortcut? so then the brave icon will show the little color circle and open the browser with the especific profile. Please give to the people the option to manually create its profiles shortcuts.

[LunaticoCR]

+1

I tried to make this work with --profile-directory on macOS but it didn't work.

[Adamantt777]

There is a toggle buttom to create shortcuts for windows desktop on the Brave profiles settings, it is bellow the colors circles selection at the very bottom.

[JulesMichael]

I tried to make this work with --profile-directory on macOS but it didn't work.

Running this works for me on MacOs. What have you tried ?

/Applications/Brave\ Browser.app/Contents/MacOS/Brave\ Browser --profile-directory="Profile 3"

[LunaticoCR]

/Applications/Brave\ Browser.app/Contents/MacOS/Brave\ Browser --profile-directory="Profile 3"

I did try this @JulesMichael but what this does for me is it opens a new window with a new tab on the specified profile. What I want is different. Basically I have two profiles (Work and Personal) each running on their own window each with multiple tabs open. What I want is a command that lets me open or bring to the front just one of the windows so I can hook that to one of my keyboard special keys. So I could press special key 1 to bring up Personal profile window and special key 2 to bring up Work profile window.